Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

And the Award for Chutzpah Goes To…

Boy, you really gotta hand it to Mark Sanford. It’s bad enough that he thinks he’s planning to run for Congress in South Carolina after his infamous hike of the Appalachian trail, but he actually had the overwhelming chutzpah to ask his ex-wife to run his campaign.

According to Jenny, she had already told Mark she would be taking a pass on the race the day before, at the funeral of a mutual friend. So when Mark came to visit her, he arrived with a proposal. “Since you’re not running, I want to know if you’ll run my campaign,” he said. “We could put the team back together.”

Jenny told him, in so many words, that wasn’t going to happen. Mark made one last appeal.

I go out of my way for this family, made up a story about hiking the Appalachians to protect you and the children and this is the thanks I get for being a good guy. Nobody cares about the husband anymore. Do you know how hard it was to hide the truth from you? No you don’t, because you never think about me. It’s all about you. You know, there are other people in this world besides you.

Mark Sanford really is a poster child for the cluelessness of class privilege. Long before his infamous hike, he spoke in front of an NAACP meeting and told them that the way to lift yourself up by the bootstraps was to use your family connections to get an entry level job on Wall Street. Seriously, he said that. The dude makes Mitt Romney look like a working class folk hero.